“(Elon) Musk and his fellow executives must be reminded of their criminal liability,” saying Bruce Daisley, a former Twitter executive who worked in the company’s UK office, days after the British protesters He tried to set fire to a hotel for asylum seekers.
But Telegram has provoked politicians more than any other platform. What could be described as the company’s uncooperative approach has put the platform — part messaging app, part social network — on a collision course with governments around the world.
The case in France is far from the first time that Telegram has been reprimanded by authorities for its refusal to cooperate. Telegram has been temporarily suspended twice in Brazil, in 2022 and 2023both times after being accused of failing to cooperate with court orders.
In 2022, similar events occurred in Germany, when the country’s interior minister also threatened to ban the app after letters, suggestions for fines and even a task force dedicated to Telegram went unanswered, according to authorities, who were concerned about anti-lockdown groups using the app to discuss political assassinations. Several German newspapers, including The tabloid Bildsent journalists to the office that Telegram claims is its headquarters in Dubai and found it deserted, with the doors locked.
At the beginning of 2024, Spain briefly blocked Telegram after media outlets reported that copyrighted material was circulating on the app. Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s National Court said his decision to ban the app was based on Telegram’s lack of cooperation with the case.
According to Arne Möhle, co-founder of encrypted email service Tuta, the accusations in France relate very specifically to Telegram’s way of working. “Of course it is important to be independent, but at the same time it is also important to comply with requests from authorities if they are valid,” he says. “It is important to show that[criminal activities are]something you do not want to support with a privacy-oriented service.”
France’s decision to charge Durov is a rare move to link a tech executive to crimes occurring on its platform, but it is not without precedent. Durov joins the ranks of the founders of The Pirate Bay, who were sentenced by Swedish authorities to a year in prison in 2009; and German-born MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom, who ultimately lost a 12-year battle to be extradited to the US from his home in New Zealand in August. plans appeal.
But Durov is the first of his generation of founders of major social media platforms to face such serious consequences. What happens next will hold lessons for all of them.
“When Meta and GOOG receive legitimate subpoenas, they respond. They also reject junk subpoenas. It’s a professional give-and-take,” said Brian Fishman, former director of counterterrorism policy at Facebook. saying on Threads before Durov was formally charged. He claimed that Telegram mostly does not do this.
“Should we be on the lookout for potentially dangerous precedents? Yes, but we should also acknowledge the brazenness with which Telegram has violated the norms adopted by almost everyone else.”